FIRST READING: David Eby's snap election could blow up in his face - National Post

David Eby holds a news conference in a B.C. liquor Store on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. Photo by Government of B.C.Article contentFirst Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

When Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa called a snap election in 1976, the official reason was that he needed a new mandate to address “a number of very important events (that) will affect the future of Quebec.”

Bourassa already had a majority government. He also had two years left in his mandate; Quebecers weren’t scheduled to go to the polls until the fall of 1978.

But optimism was riding high in the wake of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and Bourassa pegged it as a good time to cash in that goodwill for a mandate that could at least last into the 1980s.

The result was one of the most catastrophic backfires imaginable. Instead of renewing his majority, Bourassa was steamrolled by the first election win by the newly founded Parti Quebecois – a party that Bourassa had spent the campaign mocking. The Quebec Liberal even lost his own seat to a separatist poet.

On Tuesday, B.C. Premier David Eby called a snap election, also with a majority, and also with two years left in his mandate. The stated reason was that U.S. President Donald Trump is an “existential” threat to B.C., and the NDP premier needs his mandate renewed immediately to deal with it.

Trump is attacking our jobs, driving up our costs and threatening our ability to make decisions for ourselves, in our own country, for our own people. He wants to make Canada and B.C. an extension of America.For B.C. and for Canada, this is an existential moment. We have to…

The more likely reason is that, after an entire summer of polling behind the B.C. Conservatives, the opposition’s sudden collapse under leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay suddenly turned the tide, yielding two weeks’ worth of polls with an NDP lead.

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It’s a gamble, and a gamble that has often paid off for premiers in recent years. Ontario Premier Doug Ford secured his third consecutive majority with a snap election in 2025. Eby’s own predecessor, John Horgan, used a snap election in the opening months of the COVID-19 pandemic to secure not only a majority, but the most decisive result in B.C. NDP history.

But such gambles have also precipitated some of the most catastrophic reversals in Canadian political history.

The textbook example of snap election backfire is Ontario Premier David Peterson. In 1990, after just three years of his four-year mandate, he called an early election to capitalize on polls showing his Liberal party with a commanding 50 per cent of the vote.

In an instant, Ontarians who had been telling pollsters they liked Peterson changed their tune once it meant they had to mark it on a ballot.

The first poll issued after Peterson’s election call showed that his lead had instantly evaporated, and that he probably wasn’t going to retain his majority.